Movie review: ‘The Sleeping Beauty’
- Share via
“What you call happiness keeps me from living” — so says the preternaturally confident young heroine of Catherine Breillat’s “The Sleeping Beauty.” Anastasia disdains the dainty twinkly things — tutus, kimonos — that she’s expected to adore and prefers to see herself as Sir Vladimir, a knight.
One could argue that, in varying degrees, all of the iconoclastic French director’s films have dismantled femme-centric fairy tales. But in this, the second of a planned trilogy, she’s confronting burnished old folk tales head-on. Sly and playful, it’s a beauty.
The film at first feels more diffuse than her 2009 “Bluebeard,” an effect of its time-leaping structure and the muted palette that gives many scenes the look of faded storybook pages. But there’s nothing soft-focus about the fairy tale Breillat weaves — with her singular sensitivity to the sensuousness of fabrics, from the myriad buttons of a bygone virgin’s dress to the torn stockings of a contemporary Parisian.
The story begins with the cutting of an umbilical cord and gathers heft through an accrual of whimsical detail and frequently knife-sharp insight. An awareness of mortality shadows and propels Anastasia, who knows that she’ll fall into a hundred years’ sleep when she turns 16. Until then, she amasses an impressive collection of 20th-century alarm clocks.
As expected from the maker of “36 Fillette,” “Romance” and “Fat Girl,” Anastasia is not the kind of princess who settles for suspended animation while waiting for a kiss. Instead she wanders across the universe — and into “The Snow Queen,” Hans Christian Andersen’s story of separated soul mates in a world divided by evil. (Breillat flirts with stereotype when her protagonist befriends a Gypsy girl with an itch to kill.)
Played first by Carla Besnainou and then by Julia Artamonov, Anastasia avails herself of a ghost train, a carriage and a strong-backed doe as she crosses her dreamscape in pursuit of love. She’s a resourceful traveler, but whether in a fairy tale or not, that’s no guarantee of happily-ever-after.
“The Sleeping Beauty.” MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 22 minutes. At the Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood.
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
